Chapter 95 - Chaos - 3

Renée flinched. Her body had reacted involuntarily to the voice that suddenly reached her. She quickly wove divine energy into her cane and tapped the ground.

SPLASH

With the sound, a pulse spread outward and returned, transforming the surrounding space into information that settled in Renée’s mind.

'... No one?'

The voice had sounded right in front of her, yet her surroundings had not changed at all. Its owner was nowhere to be found.

Then the voice rang out again.

“Now, see this liquor? There’s just one thing you have to do. Bring home enough money for me to drink this ‘Bera’ every day.”

The voice snickered. As Renée’s face tightened at the intent behind those words, another voice followed.

“... Yes.”

It was very young, yet somehow familiar. Renée recognized its owner at once. Shock spread across her face.

'... Bera.'

Then she realized what was happening. She remembered the contents of a book Bera had read to her in the library they had visited shortly after arriving in the capital.

“Orgus.”

The Pilgrim Who Walks Through Time. An ancient species that showed others visions of different times.

As a strange certainty arose that this was magic he had worked, the voice spoke again.

“Put some life into your answer, you little shit!”

THUD

“Ghk...!”

“Huh? Louder! With enthusiasm! That’s how you answer me!”

Renée went deathly pale at the voices. She moved without thinking, flailing about and reaching around her, but her hands found nothing. The same foul stench hung in the air, and the air against her skin was still thick and clinging.

“Bera, Bera, Bera! Just live up to your name. Huh? Pay me back for raising you, so I can drink this one thing!”

The voice raged. It was steeped in anger, delight, and some other thick, unidentifiable malice.

Renée realized what moment this vision, this fragment of time, was showing her.

This was Bera as a child. It was showing her the origin of his name.

It was showing her that the name Bera—the word that gave form to her love—had been forged amid such malice.

“Y-yes...!”

Fear and despair filled the young Bera’s voice. Pain filled it too. Hearing it, Renée felt a pain as though she were being torn apart inside.

TICK

The ticking of a second hand reaches her. It accelerates. Perception and thought warp. By the time the staggering Renée regained her balance, another voice was speaking.

“Chief... Tommy isn’t coming.”

A little girl’s voice, thick with tears. Then came a boy’s icy voice.

“He’s probably dead.”

Again, it was Bera. Renée felt her breath catch.

There was nothing at all in his voice as he spoke of someone’s death—someone she guessed had been quite close to him.

Only a dry, cold chill filled it.

“Fucking idiots die. Run if you want to live. Haven’t I always told you that?”

“Hh...”

His sneering voice bore down on the girl with that same chill.

“If you don’t want to croak, you run too. Stand there blubbering, and you’ll be the one lying dead tomorrow.”

His words are followed by a thud and the girl’s scream of “Aah!” Apparently, he had struck her. Renée flinched.

TICK

The world tilts again. Perception warps.

“Guh...!”

A groan comes from the man who first gave Bera his name.

“Filthy vermin.”

Bera’s voice follows. What filled it was... delight.

“You’re dying because you’ve got no fucking backbone. Stupid bastard.”

As Bera spoke, snickering in a slightly unhinged voice, a crunch followed. Renée’s entire body went rigid.

'... He killed him.'

She could tell from the sound alone. That was the sound of a human body being broken. She felt as though her breathing had stopped.

TICK

The second hand moves.

“B-Bera... I cleared out all the other sections. So please, please, please let me li—”

CRUNCH

A body breaks.

TICK

The second hand advances.

“Boss. I brought in Fomil. This bastard was colluding with the other cartels...”

CRUNCH

Another body breaks.

“... Yeah. That feels good.”

TICK

The second hand advances again.

“Kroden’s been siphoning off drugs. Boss, punish—”

CRUNCH

“... Him? Yeah, I did.”

TICK

“Boss, Boss? After all the fucking loyalty I’ve shown—!”

CRUNCH

“Exactly. Why get greedy instead of just doing as you’re told? Fucking idiot.”

TICK

The second hand advanced, a human body broke, and the second hand advanced again. Those moments continued.

Before she knew it, Renée had collapsed into the mud, her face blank.

The sins Bera had once spoken of were being laid bare. At last, the past of that ever-straitlaced holy knight who said he pursued the light was revealing itself.

TICK

The second hand tilted.

“Marquis, I believe I told you I wanted to make a deal?”

“B-Bera. Hear me out a moment. Please?”

CRUNCH

Once again, another terrified person was broken.

Renée wanted to cover her ears. She did not want to hear anything more. She was frightened. Bera’s terrible coldness, the emptiness she felt in his voice, and having to listen to those moments one after another without being able to do anything frightened her beyond measure.

She wrapped her trembling arms around herself and squeezed her eyes shut.

CRUNCH

“Idiot.”

Renée sensed something wrong. She raised her head.

'... His voice.'

At some point, Bera’s voice had become that of a grown man.

Yet Bera had surely entered the Holy Empire’s service at fourteen. The voice she heard now was the one she knew from her everyday life.

What was happening? Wasn’t she witnessing the past? Then why was she hearing the adult Bera’s voice?

As those thoughts sent goosebumps across her skin, something stranger still occurred.

TICK

After the ticking came:

“-----.”

A strange, high-pitched whine rang in her ears. She could tell it was a human voice, yet she could not understand a single word.

Then a familiar voice followed.

“--, this is Bera’s territory. You must stay away from here...”

... It was Rohan’s voice.

“-----.”

“What? Oh, please! --! His Holiness really will kill me, you know?”

She heard Rohan pleading with someone.

The name alone remained distorted into noise, impossible to distinguish.

Renée’s expression stiffened.

What was going on? What strange phenomenon was this?

There should have been no one Rohan addressed so respectfully except His Holiness, yet the person he was speaking to was not His Holiness. Renée could not understand it.

“Oh, honestly! I’m not taking responsibility! I mean it! I warned you!”

Following that shout, Renée sensed the high-pitched noise take the shape of laughter.

TICK

The second hand moved again.

“Cough...!”

This time, she heard coughing. All the thoughts she had been pursuing scattered.

'Bera!'

It was Bera’s cough. A sound deeply entwined with pain, with the shadow of death resting over it.

“--...”

The words were muted, but she immediately recognized Bera’s voice.

Renée’s face tightened, then shock struck her at the reply.

“------.”

She realized that this muted voice, the person Bera was speaking to now, belonged to the same person who had just been speaking with Rohan.

As confusion rose within her, the second hand moved again.

TICK

“You truly are devout, --.”

“-----?”

Bera gave a hollow laugh. Whatever he found so absurd, his words were mocking.

His voice was cold.

TICK

“Stop wasting your effort. You know there’s no hope, don’t you, --?”

“-----.”

There was anger.

His voice was a little chilly.

TICK

“In the gutter, we call people like that fucking idiots.”

“-----.”

There was mockery. Within it, fear.

His voice was lukewarm.

TICK

“... Don’t you regret it?”

Bera asked that question next.

Renée’s body stiffened.

She could feel something in his voice: naked sorrow of a kind Bera had never once shown her. Fear.

“... You’re insane.”

Remorse.

TICK. TICK.

The second hand advances faster. Her perception keeps warping completely, then finding its place again. Her breath stops, then resumes. Every sensation in her body is honed to a sharp edge.

At the end of it, Bera’s voice rang out once more.

“... What an ugly sight.”

This time, crackling static cut out everything in the middle, making the words almost impossible to discern.

Yet even through that, the emotion in his voice was branding itself onto Renée’s heart.

“What did I tell you? I told you you’d die.”

His voice was precarious, as though his breath might cease at any moment.

It was hotter than ever before. It felt like rage that could burn the entire world, yet also like the scream of a monstrous man burning his own body away.

“... I lived for myself. That’s how I lived. But you know...”

And there was regret.

Renée understood.

The emotion in Bera’s voice now was regret. Sorrow, despair, grief. Those words, uttered in a voice on the verge of failing, were like screams.

It was the voice of someone speaking of loss.

Tears flowed from Renée’s eyes. Unlike the muck in the gutter, the liquid running down her cheeks was clear and transparent.

She could not understand the chain of events or the situation.

Why was the voice she heard that of an adult? Why was Bera dying like that? Who was the person he was speaking to now, the person who had also spoken with Rohan?

She understood none of it. Yet one emotion—sorrow—kept swelling and tearing at her inside.

Bera, who always spoke of regret and light. The shape of his life was faintly emerging.

She had witnessed only a few scattered moments, so she could not claim to know everything. But that made it all the sadder.

His life could not have ended with merely these few things.

The past he had shuddered at so fiercely—these things she could not tell were past or future—must have been that desperate.

Renée found it unbearably sad.

Then she realized something. The tragedy that had come into her life was only one among countless tragedies.

She was not the only one who had suffered tragedy.

Everyone in the world carried a tragedy of their own, and amid it they hurt, regretted, and rose again.

... That was how Bera had risen.

Her warped perception finds its place again. The halted world begins to move.

“Saaa...”

Rohan’s voice overlaps in increasingly shorter stretches.

SPLASH

She hears muddy water falling.

Amid it, Renée heard a strange voice that seemed to be delivered directly into her mind.

[Three.]

With that voice, the world moved again.

“Saintess!”